


Mood Swings

by Debate



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Communication, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Pregnancy, wild i know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 03:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14992043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Debate/pseuds/Debate
Summary: Emori discovers she’s pregnant, and figures out how she feels about it. Figuring out how John feels about it is a whole other situation. A story in seven days. Modern AU.





	Mood Swings

Her bathroom is a box, and if she stands in the middle with her arms outstretched she can touch both the door and the back wall of the shower. The sink is a dusky pink and the hinges on the medicine cabinet squeal every time she opens it. There’s no doubt that it’s Emori’s least favorite space in her tiny apartment, but she sits on the closed seat of the toilet for an hour and a half at two in the morning on a steaming hot day in May anyway. She keeps on waiting for herself to be sick, but it never comes. 

Eventually she crawls back into bed. She usually sleeps on her stomach, but she doesn’t feel like she can right now, so she lays on her side and reaches for her phone. The blue light stings her eyes as she curls with it under the covers, looking at John’s contact information and the picture that’s saved, of him lying on a dock in a lake they visited the previous summer, until her alarm rings at six. 

Work is a drag the next day, especially when she has to schedule her lunch late so that she can pick up John when he gets out of school. 

Parents are lined up around the block to pick their kids up, because school buses aren’t enough for people anymore, so she pulls into a residential street that’s a five minute walk from the school if you cut through the baseball field, and texts John where she’s at. 

If he thinks it’s unusual for her to pick him up when she should be working, the thumbs up emoji he sends back doesn’t show it. 

Her hands grip the wheel like she's pushing ninety down the freeway and not parked in a school zone. Five minutes isn't a long time really but it's enough time to run through every single one of John’s possible reactions. She takes a deep breath when she sees him in the rearview mirror. They take care of each other, she reminds herself, and they still will. 

“Hey,” he says when he pops open the door. He dumps his backpack on the floor of the passenger side and leans over the console to kiss her hello before settling in his seat. “So what's the special occasion? Not every Wednesday you pick me up from school.” 

“John,” she says, and she thinks this should be hard to do, be in some way more monumental, but then again, words have always been easy for her. “I'm pregnant.” 

In all the scenarios she had imagined in the time it took John to get here, she had admittedly picked a favorite. One where he'd smile, in happiness or disbelief, hug her, and whisper soothing words in ear. And to his credit he doesn't have one of the more frustrating responses, doesn't ask stupid questions he already knows the answers to, or accuse her of making a joke. But the first thing to color his face is fear, gaunt and white and unmistakable. He exhales, his lips slightly parted, and after meeting her eyes he does reach over then to hug her and whisper soothing words in her ear. But it's too late, a seed of doubt has been planted in her belly, to grow alongside the part of him that's already there. She doesn't cry, but it's a near thing. 

* * *

 

Going back to work after driving him home is weird, but it’s not like she’s in a position to ask for any time off. She’s distracted for the rest of the day, spending too much time on the work computer looking up things she’d already know if she actually paid any attention in twelfth grade health. Her boss definitely notices, but Emori’s only working the counter today, not doing repairs, so it’s not like a lot of attention is really required. Raven does mention it when they’re locking up, though. 

“You doing okay?” 

“I’ve been better,” Emori admits, and it’s probably indicative of how much she’s grown to trust Raven that she doesn’t lie automatically. “Just got a lot on my mind.” 

“Well let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” Raven says and Emori nods. She’ll have to tell Raven, and soon, but she’s going to wait until she has an actual plan in mind. 

The sun hasn’t even begun to set yet when she gets out, the benefit of it nearly being summer. She ignores the left turn that would take her home, and just drives for a while to give herself room to think outside of her stuffy apartment. 

She’ll need to see a doctor, and wonders if she can guilt Abby into finding an obstetrician who will do appointments for cheap. Tell Raven, and her brother. Talk to John more.

She cranks up the radio. The song that’s on is unfamiliar, but it’s a female artist and has enough bass that she can feel it in her chest. When the chorus plays for the third time she sings along. She has a plan now, or at least the outlines of one, and the music is playing loud enough that it drowns out some of her fear. 

Her apartment complex might be the nicest play she’s ever lived, but that doesn’t mean it’s nice in general. There’s always someone playing music, or Spanish soap operas, and her neighbors are always either fucking or screaming at each other. She doesn’t think about what adding a crying baby will do to the mix. 

When she gets inside she heats up leftover stew that she and John had made on Sunday, and leans against her refrigerator to eat it. She needs to clean her kitchen table, has been meaning to do it for months, as its primary purpose is to store the papers that accumulate in life, rather than, you know, being a place to eat. It’s a scattered disarray of bills, circulars, old issues of Modern Machine Shop, and cluttered notebooks from high school. The one thing saving it from making her look like a total hoarder is a space cleared out, furthest from the wall. It’s for a neat stack of papers, all from the same sending address. Emori sets the empty bowl down in the sink, and reaches for the paper at the bottom of the pile. Rereading the acceptance letter sparks the same feeling of elation that she’d felt when she’d broken the envelopes seal and read its contents the first time. Until she finishes it, and feels a stone sink heavy in her stomach. There’s a telephone number that she needs to call in the header, but she won’t, not yet. 

She showers, pokes her stomach a few times, but it doesn’t feel any different yet. She turns the heat up as high as the building’s shitty water heater will allow in an effort to tire herself out. She knows she should go to bed early, considering how little she slept the previous night, but the mere idea of being stuck in the dark with her thoughts makes her anxious. She hates sleeping alone. 

She rubs shampoo into her scalp and tries not to think about it. 

When she gets out she checks her phone and sees a missed call from John, as well as a voicemail, something he doesn’t have the patience to ever leave. Her thumb trembles as it hovers over the play button for a drawn-out second. 

“Hey,” his grainy voice says, “It’s me. I just wanted to tell you that you’re the best and I love you...g’night.” A background hum continues for several seconds, and she keeps expecting him to say something else, but then there’s a click and the voicemail ends. The fist that had been clenched around her heart since she saw the notification eases. She swallows, unsure of what she was even afraid of. 

She goes to sleep with wet hair, John’s message playing on loop until she falls asleep. 

When she wakes up her phone is dead, and at first it seems like harbinger, but it turns out to be a pretty normal day. It’s Friday when things begin to spiral. 

“Emori,” Raven says when they’re eating lunch in the backroom, a place as messy as her kitchen but five times as comfortable. “Are you pregnant?” 

It’s such a total shift from their previous conversation, about a fried hard drive that had been brought in and had been giving Emori a hard time, that it takes Emori far too long to even understand the question. 

“What?” she asks, in the moment before it clicks. 

“Are you—” 

“Yes,” Emori admits before Raven can repeat herself, something squirming in her stomach that’s neither the baby or her PB&J. “How did you know?”

Raven blushes and picks at the label of her Snapple bottle. “I, uh, checked the computer’s search history on Wednesday, I was worried something was wrong, that you were in trouble.” 

Emori isn’t angry, so few people have ever expressed genuine concern for her that Raven’s snooping doesn’t really feel like a betrayal. She is embarrassed though. Raven is looking at her with sympathy, but it edges so close to pity that shame colors her cheeks. 

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do about college?” Raven asks, and Emori’s heart drops because of course the first question that’s asked is the one she doesn’t have an answer to. 

“I don’t think I’ll be able to start in the fall,” she admits, and Raven’s gaze lowers. They’d worked so hard earlier in the year, studying for the SAT she’d never taken in high school, putting together a resume so good that it overshadowed her abysmal disciplinary record. And she’d gotten in, and now she can’t go. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t go later, when the kid is older.” Raven nods in agreement, but there’s a pursed-lips disappointment in her expression, and Emori doesn’t know if it’s disappointment in her or on her behalf, and she doesn’t have the courage to ask. 

* * *

John shows up at seven that night, like he does every Friday. And he brings sandwiches and cheetos, like he does every Friday. But when he walks into her living room, out of the poor lighting of the complex’s hallway, she sees a bruise forming on the right side of his jaw, a hexagonal imprint visible in the swathes of purple. 

“John,” she says with concern, reaching out to inspect the injury, but he turns from her hands, tucking his chin into his shoulder so she can’t see. “Was it your mom?” She asks, even though she knows the answer. There’s no doubt in her mind that if she plucked off Caroline Murphy’s engagement ring it would fit perfectly into the indent on her son’s face. Anger settles in her gut, but she already knows that nothing she can say will prompt him to report his mother. Abandoning her would consume him with guilt, even though staying with her feeds his misplaced guilt everyday. 

“Yeah,” he admits, then licks his lips and sits on the arm of her couch. “I told her I knocked you up, and she wasn’t exactly happy with me. The real kicker is I don’t think she was actually drunk.” 

“John,” she says imploringly. As much as they’ve been a team since they met and started dating there are still things he thinks he has to face alone, that are his fault. “I would’ve gone with you. There’s no reason you should’ve faced her alone, especially when you know how misplaced her anger is,” Emori insists, crouching in front of him, so that he’s forced to look at her. 

“That was the point, I’d rather her be angry at me than you,” he explains. “She hates you enough.” Emori has to concede the point, although she still doesn’t understand how his mother is able to perform the mental gymnastics necessary to believe that no one is good enough for her son while simultaneously resenting said son for his every action. Maybe it’s just that she can’t stand seeing him happy. 

“Do you want me to get some ice?” she offers, but John shakes his head, unwrapping his sandwich instead. Emori rises from the floor and slides onto the couch, reaching for her own dinner. 

“I think I’m going to visit Otan tomorrow,” she says leaning into John as he slips onto the couch proper. “I want you to come.” 

“Okay,” he agrees. “I’m going to stay the night anyway.” 

She nods in understanding and waits for one of John’s usual quips, or for him to start asking her questions about the things they really need to talk about. But he rubs her upper arm instead, looking far too distracted. 

“We’ll be okay,” she says, even though he’s always the one to offer reassurances in their relationship. At least she sleeps better that night. 

Visiting Otan too often feels like a chore, and she feels guilty every time frustration and exhaustion eat away at her when she visits, but it doesn’t change the way the visits make her feel. It’s probably just because there’s something tiring and constraining about prison, even when she's not the one behind bars. 

They arrive for the nine o'clock visitation hour, only a handful of other people with them to see their loved ones. 

Otan has looked better, but he has also looked worse, and he doesn't seem as angry and bitter as the last time she came. 

“How have you been?” She asks him as they sit at a table that reminds her of a high school cafeteria. 

Otan shrugs. “I'm bored,” he says without elaboration. It’s a bit odd, normally he’d give her a play-by-play of every little thing that happens because he has no one else to vent to. It’s probably because John’s here. Otan had always been rather ambivalent about him, glad that he made her happy but concerned about his reputation. There was a bit of hypocrisy wrapped up in that judgement of course. “How about you?” Otan asks. Under the table she feels John’s hand squeeze her knee. 

“I'm pregnant,” she says. She hadn't run through the possibilities of Otan’s reactions like she had with John, but even if she did, she doesn't think she would have imagined Otan turning to John, the anger she had been so glad to see absent now back with full force.

“You motherfucking idiot,” Otan seethes, and she hears John say ‘sister-fucking, actually’, except it must be his voice in her head, because he doesn't say that at all. He’s frozen, looking at Otan like he's his executioner, and he’s already accepted death. 

“Otan!” She snaps, angry on John’s behalf, even when her bones feel like lead underneath her skin, weighed down with shame and disappointment. But she’s ignored as Otan lashes into John with hostile stoicness. He’s acting like the people he was indebted to, the ones who had got him arrested, and it feels like she’s losing her brother all over again, nine months after he got locked up. 

“She was going to be different, be better, but you’ve dragged her back into the same stupid cycle!” 

“He hasn’t dragged me into anything!” Emori protests, getting more panicked with each second that Otan continues to yell and that John remains silent. John is always itching for a fight and Otan is always squirming out of them. She can’t read either of them and it’s terrifying her. 

“Really?” Otan challenges, “Because the last I checked, you had a job that paid decently, and you were going to school in the fall, and you’d made the best of all the shit we had to deal with when we were kids, and now this delinquent screwed up your whole future!” 

“Otan stop!” She yells, near tears, but refusing to let them fall. “I can handle this, okay? I’m an adult,” she says, even though she doesn’t feel like one, and would like nothing more than to have a parent, “I’ve managed by myself this far, I can look after someone else too.” 

Something in her strengthens at her own words. After all, the person who’s believed in her the longest is herself. 

Otan is quiet now, but he’s finally meeting her eyes. His two nods are almost imperceptible, but she takes it as the apology her brother would never verbally give. 

“Miss, sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” a guard interrupts, and it’s only then that she recognizes that they’ve had an audience for their entire spat. For a pair of siblings who used to do everything possible to avoid attention, they sure made quite a scene. 

She and John are quiet as they exit, all the way until they reach car, when he asks for the keys. 

“I’m fine, John,” she insists, but the concern written out on his face is so genuine that she can’t help but hand over the keys. 

“You two don’t fight like that,” John remarks turning down the radio as he starts the car. It’s true, she and Otan used to rely so heavily on each other that they could predict each others thoughts, she can’t remember a time they were so out of tune. 

“I guess it was shocking news,” she says.

“Yeah,” John says, something tight in his voice, “It is.” 

“Are we gonna talk about this now?” She asks, a little relieved. 

“What, specifically?”

“Well how do you feel?” She presses, John hates talking about his feelings, curls them up into little balls that he keeps buried inside himself, under layers of sarcasm and arrogance. But he talks to her. 

“Doesn’t matter how I feel,” he deflects, “I’m not the pregnant one.”

“John, of course it matters,” she says, “You’re its father.”

His face goes the same white it did on Wednesday, and he squeezes the wheel like he does her hand on the nights he wakes up with his demons banging on the inside of his head. When he exhales it’s like a hot summer wind, at once both relieving and uncomfortable. “I’m scared,” he admits, although she had already gathered that much. Then after a beat, “Angry.”

“Angry?”

“Not at you!” he rushes to say, not that she had thought he would be. “Just…” 

He trails off, but she knows what he would’ve said. At myself. It burns a little hole in her heart. 

She says his name, as softly as she can manage. She wants him to look at her, but his eyes are glued to the road. 

“I’m not mad at you,” she tries, in an effort to reaffirm things to him. “We’re a good team, right?” That’s something he said to her, so long ago now she had forgotten when and what it was about, but the sentiment stuck, and it’s no less true today. 

“Yeah,” he breathes, still not looking at her, but at least not so on edge. “I’m sorry.” 

Her brow twitches. 

“What are you apologizing for?” 

“It’s preemptive,” he says, with his usual humor, the conversation is over. “I’m always screwing something up.” It’s a sentiment she wants to fight him on, wants to remind him of all the ways he’s cleaned up his own act, all the ways he’s helped her, but she knows he doesn’t want to hear it, and won’t believe it anyway. 

“You staying over again tonight?” she asks. He can’t go home to his mother, not know. Emori shivers thinking about all the needling toxicness the woman would spit out and leave to fester in his head. 

“Sure,” he agrees, and turns up the radio. 

 

* * *

Sundays mornings are nice. Maybe it’s a sentiment driven into her mind by the 60s tv dramas that she used to watch after school and daydream about in her freetime. She had loved the idyllic family dynamic when she was little. Part of her still idealizes that image of family, two loving parents and a child or two, but she knows John doesn’t.

She nozzles closer to him, made slightly more difficult by the way he’s curled so tightly around himself. He hadn’t rested easy last night. She had fallen asleep before him, and had woken up twice due to his shifting. He’s still now, though, his cheek squished from where it’s resting on the pillow. She wants to stay in bed with him, but she’s not tired, and there’s only so much time she can spend wrapped in cotton sheets before she gets uncomfortable. So she gets out of bed, pulls the blanket up to John’s shoulders, and goes to the bathroom. The cardboard box that housed the pregnancy test still lies in the wastebasket, she looks at it as she brushes her teeth, wonders if she’s going to be throwing up her guts in a couple of days. 

The running water must have woke him, because John is sitting up in her bed when she walks back into the bedroom. 

“You want breakfast?” she asks. John blinks a few times, he’s still groggy, the very opposite of a morning person. “I’ve got cereal.” 

“Wheaties?” 

“Yeah,” she laughs, “you’re such an old man.” 

He rubs his eyes, his shoulders angled away from her, and she wants to ask about the sudden distance he’s putting between them, but he climbs out of bed in the next moment, and follows her to the kitchen. 

They sit on the counter and eat cereal, Wheaties for him and Cheerios for her, and it’s almost like any weekend where he’s over avoiding his mom. Except it’s not. 

“I have to do some chores today,” she says, rinsing out her bowl, “you can help.”

“I actually have a lot of work,” he answers, “sorry.” 

“Really? You’re graduating in less than a month and they’re still giving you work?” His teachers this year had been pretty fair, probably because he’d actually done his homework most of the time. 

“Just studying for finals and stuff. I mean doing your laundry does sound more fun, but unfortunately I can’t flunk math.” 

“You’re good at math,” she reminds him, because as much as his ego is inflated to eye-rolling proportions, his own belief in his intellectual capabilities is staggeringly low. 

“Hm, big talk. You’ll be coming home with problems that look like calculus grew a second head in a couple months and we both know I won’t be helping you.” 

The comment is casual, flippant. It would have been funny two weeks ago. 

“John, I’m not going to school,” she says with some regret. He stops in the motion of shrugging on his jacket. 

“What do mean?” he says, an edge in his voice that threatens to crumble into panic if she prodes it. “Otan was just saying things, you’re still going, right?” 

“Well, not this year. I mean with a baby…”

“But...” he protests, suddenly looking distraught. Something quakes within her when she realizes it’s on her behalf. “You really wanted to go,” he says flatly, looking at her shoulder. He sounds resigned and stuffs his hands in his pockets to no doubt pick at his fingernails in the way he does when he’s nervous. 

“I did,” she admits, “but I can’t now. If I was taking classes—”

“I could take care of the kid,” he interrupts, “I mean I was always going to,” he rushes to say, a wild fright in his eyes, “you know that, right?” 

Not for a moment did she think that he'd leave her alone, but he seems to think that the thought may have crossed her mind. Does he doubt that she knows he loves her? Or does he suspect that she thinks so lowly of him that she'd believe he'd leave their child, like she was left? 

“John, of course I didn’t think that,” she says. “I mean I don’t have it figured out yet, but you’ll graduate in a month and you can move in with me, hell you’re eighteen, you could do it now, and the baby will be born, and we’ll just...we’ll just figure it out.” 

“Emori, we can’t just wing it,” John counters with a level-headedness she wouldn’t characterize him as having. He’s been more serious over the past five days than she can ever remember him ever being and his sudden acquisition of forethinking has unbalanced her expectations and their familiarity. He’s not expressing his emotions through sarcasm, and it’s worrying her. “You can’t give up on everything only for us to screw it up.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she says, even if it might have been. “And we’re not going to screw anything up.”

“You can’t know that,” he says, shaking his head and zipping up his jacket, and she’ll be damned if she lets him walk away from this conversation. “We’re not that stupid.”

“John,” she says, catching his eyes. “You’re right, we aren’t that stupid,” she concedes, “and maybe we’ll be shitty parents, but we’re going to do our best, okay. That’s more than my parents ever promised.” 

John doesn’t move to leave, which she takes as a good sign. Something she said obviously struck home in his mind and she watches his eyes trace her figure, lingering on her belly, her hand, before settling on her face again. 

“Our best, huh?” John replies with a tight smile, one that makes it look like he’s in pain, but is willing to fight through it anyway. “Okay.” 

“Okay,” she says, feeling at least a little more reassured. A tired hesitance still plays across John’s face, but she doesn’t expect him to recover from that quite yet. 

“I gotta go, I think,” he says moving past her, “good luck with doing your laundry alone.” 

“I’m sure I’ll manage,” she says, trying for humor, but not quite in the mood for it. He nods and closes the door behind himself. She itches her cheek and sighs. He forgot to kiss her goodbye. 

* * *

Emori gets to work early on Monday, maybe hoping that if she forces her routine things will start to feel normal. But Raven disrupts that plan when she walks in the back door and finds Emori finally making progress on that hard drive that had been giving her so many problems. 

“How you feeling?” Is the first things she asks, and Emori realizes that she had better prepare herself for seven more months of this line of questioning. 

“Fine,” she says maybe more sharply than Raven deserves. “I haven’t really been sick at all, and I’m getting enough sleep.” 

Raven dumps her bag beneath her workbench, and comes to stand behind Emori as she works. 

“You know actually being fine constitutes more than just being physically well,” she says, and Raven is one of the few people Emori would recognize as having enough experience in the matter to speak with any authority on the subject. Emori sets down her tools and turns to look at her. 

“Something’s wrong with John,” she sighs, not really wanting to talk about it, but knowing that she probably should, and that Raven won’t let it go. “I’m just not sure what it is, or how I can talk to him about it.” 

Raven’s jaw twitches. “You know I called him on Friday, but he didn’t pick up. Didn’t get back to me either.” It’s easy for Emori to forget that John is a weird kind of pseudo-friend with Raven, even though she got the job through some sort of reverse nepotism where Raven didn’t really like John, but was willing to give her a chance regardless. 

“He was with me almost all night,” she reveals. “His mother didn’t take the news well, and neither did Otan when we went to see him on Saturday.” 

Raven’s mouth quirks in sympathy, and then she straightens a tiny bit like she does whenever she has a breakthrough. Emori just wants to get back to work, but Raven is more stubborn than her. 

“But how did you take the news?” Raven asks with a tone that suggests she’s both curious and regretful that she didn’t ask earlier. 

“I was scared,” she says, remembering John’s response in the car when she asked a similar question. “A little regretful, but not that much. It was easier to accept than I might have thought.” She remembers then the second half of John’s answer, where he’d revealed he was angry at himself. Now that she’s thinking about it more, that reaction is making less and less sense. 

“But I bet it wasn’t that easy for Murphy to accept,” Raven says, and Emori knows she’s right, “He’s probably still freaking out, and his mom’s and Otan’s reactions didn’t help. He’s worried about you. I mean, I know I am.” 

Emori smiles at her friend, grateful for the concern even if she feels it’s a little unnecessary and that it’s really not the root of John’s problems. 

“We talked on Sunday, I think we’re on the same page about the baby, but it’s like he keeps expecting me to push him away,” she tries to explain, and Raven frowns. 

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Raven shrugs. “You know Murphy best, if you think that’s what he’s thinking then you’re probably right. Did you try asking him about it?”

“No,” she admits, and she really wishes that John would just talk about the important things that weigh on his mind without prompting sometimes, but if he’s ever going to get to that point she knows that she’ll have to pry the information out of him now. “It’ll be a place to start then.”

“Okay!” Raven says with a clap of her hands, “I’ll stop distracting you now. Lord knows Raven’s Repairs wouldn’t be half as far as it is without all your hard work.” 

Emori picks up her tools, trying not to let a prideful grin stretch too far across her face. For a Monday morning, things aren’t going horribly. 

Later, Bellamy Blake walks in after she and Raven switched positions and she’s managing the front counter. A good friend of Raven’s and another of John’s weird pseudo-friends, they’ve always floated around the peripheries of each other. And while he’s been nothing but friendly to her in their few interactions, she can’t say she has a strong opinion about him in any capacity. 

“Raven’s in the back if you want to see her,” Emori tells him, taking stock of the way he hesitates a few feet in front of the counter. 

“Actually,” he says, “I came to see you. Murphy called me the other day, and I wanted to offer my congratulations in person.” Bellamy, she knows, raised his little sister, practically on his own. He works with kids too, teaching or youth counseling, something along those lines. She understands why John called him. 

But she doesn’t know why he’s here. Why he is smiling so softly, and kindly, at her. For a moment she is so shocked she doesn’t notice she’s crying. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Bellamy asks, stepping forward like he wants to comfort her. 

“Yeah,” Emori says, “you’re just the first person to say that,” she reveals, her voice wet. “I didn’t think I was allowed to be happy about it.” 

“Of course you are,” Bellamy says, now actually reaching out to comfort her, rubbing her shoulder gently. It’s not something she would have believed if she was trying to tell it to herself, but coming from someone else, it feels so much more acceptable. Sure it will be hard, and the timing is awful, and she still really wishes she could go to college in the fall, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be happy about creating a family. “It’s a happy thing, Emori,” Bellamy continues. “I’m sure you’ll be a great mother.” 

She just cries all the harder. 

 

* * *

There are three texts from John when she wakes up Tuesday morning. She sighs as she looks at the sent times, 2:48 am, 3:01 am, 3:07 am. 

_Hey_ , the first one reads, like the first text he ever sent her, when he was still nervous about talking to her and couldn’t quite get a full sentence out for fear of scaring her off. The second message at least is more substantial. 

_I know I said sunday that i’d go with you to the doctor’s tuesday but I thought maybe you’d be more comfortable going alone and then i’d come to your place after??_

_I guess you’ll just see this in the morning. Let me know_ , was the final message, and Emori had to reread them, confused as to John’s reasoning. Was he concerned about imposing? Did he want to give her privacy? Did he just not want to go?

She doesn’t text him back right away, gets ready for her day and is just about to leave before she pulls out her phone again. 

I’ll go alone she types out. If she’s going to confront John about all his broken off interactions, it’s not going to be at a doctor’s office. 

Her appointment creeps up on her. She had scheduled it on Sunday for three so she wouldn’t miss too much work, and had made a vested attempt throughout the day to stay busy so she wouldn’t be constantly thinking about it. It would seem that her attempts work a little too well, because the alarm she had set for two thirty to tell her to leave manages to startle her. 

Raven gives her an encouraging thumbs up as she leaves, and it’s the only thing that gets her through the judging looks of the other expecting mothers in the waiting room and the confused responses of the receptionist as she explains her insurance situation. 

The doctor herself is nice at least. Far too smiley for it to be genuine, but she doesn’t make any comments about her age, only explaining that pregnancies for those under twenty tended to present more risks, although after what Emori considers to be a far too thorough physical she says that she doubts age will be a factor, especially considering Emori will be twenty by the time the baby is born. 

“I’m more concerned about your family’s health history,” she says once Emori is back in her clothes and sitting on the paper-covered examination bed. She starts asking questions then, many of which Emori doesn’t know the answers to, simply because she doesn’t know her family. 

“The deformity is genetic,” she explains with a wave of her hand before the doctor can ask about it, the older woman was making it too awkward with the way she was dancing around it. “My brother has something similar.” 

The doctor marks something down on her checklist. “There are many options we can do for testing. Odds that you pass it down are about fifty percent, higher if there’s any similar history on the father’s side. Do you know of anything?” 

Emori shakes her head, and the doctor purses her lips before setting the clipboard down in her lap. “Is the father in the picture at all, or…” she trails off, and Emori is suddenly reminded of hours spent in the school guidance office, where a well-meaning older woman was doing her best to act open-minded in the face of her traditional sensibilities. At least they both tried, Emori has faced far worse. 

“Yeah, he’s my boyfriend,” she says, unsure why the admission makes her feel uncomfortable. This woman has already looked between her legs today, there’s no reason to feel like her privacy is being violated now. But Emori looks at the doctor, sees all the assumptions that she makes as they run across her face, and figures that there are things she wouldn’t understand that Emori would rather just keep to herself. John has the capacity to be a good father, she's sure of that. 

“Alright, that’s good for you then,” she says with that same false preppy attitude she’s had for the whole appointment. “Make sure he helps, don’t let him get away with anything!”

Emori offers a small smile and nod in a way that’s clearly fake, but convincing to someone who doesn’t know her. The doctor picks up her clipboard and runs through more questions: When was her last period? Does she have any STDs? What is her diet and exercise routine like? 

She answers to the best of her ability, at the same time trying to take stock of all the information the doctor rattles back at her: symptoms to look out for, foods to avoid, what prenatal vitamins she needs to take. She leaves with four laminated pamphlets in hand, and more information bouncing around in her head than it seems possible she’ll ever need to know. 

The station she listens to on the drive home is playing classic rock, and she wouldn’t consider herself a fan, but it sits with familiarity in her chest. She doesn’t know why but it has a quality that makes it seem like things will be alright. 

Such hopes are almost totally dashed when she gets home to find John sitting down with his legs outstretched and his back leaning against her front door. The grey hood of his seasonally inappropriate sweatshirt crowds over his face, making him look like an absolute menace to society. 

“You know the whole point of me giving you a key was so that you could let yourself in when I’m not home,” she says, her tiredness leaking out. She slips her own key into the lock over his head, but doesn’t turn it. 

“I was waiting for you,” he replies, rolling to his feet. 

“You could’ve waited inside,” she says, opening the door, “that was the point.” 

“Hm, but why would I do that when I had an opportunity to creep out your annoying neighbors?” He says, backing into her apartment.

He sheds his hoodie once they’re inside, and goes to the kitchen to pour them both glasses of water. She sips at hers after he hands it over with a hesitant kiss on her cheek, like he didn’t quite feel comfortable with the affection. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks, getting to the point. Both she and John have a low threshold for bullshit and it’s not often that they have to tolerate it between the two of them. 

In a manner clearly meant to stall, John gulps down his water and goes back to the sink to refill it. 

“I don’t know, why are you still pretending you want me around?” he bites back, low enough that the rush of water out of the faucet almost drowns him out. Emori blinks, feels her lip tremble before she bites down on it. 

“John of course I want you around,” she says, confused as to why it needs to be said at all, and why John doesn’t seem to believe her. 

“Why?” he says, “So I can keep messing up your life?” The water shuts off with a creak of the handle. 

“What are you talking about?” She asks, doing her best to avoid anger, but the hurt and fear crawling up her throat edge her closer to the feeling. 

“Come on, Emori, like you don't already know?” He says, turning around glass in hand. She’d think he was icily composed if the water in the glass wasn't trembling. 

“I don't!” She says, her voice rising even though she doesn't want it to. “You're the one with all the mixed signals! Avoiding me one minute and comforting me the next!” 

“That's because I love you, but I'm the one ruining your life!” 

“What?” She breathes, feeling like a brick has been dropped on her head. “John, of course you're not—”

“Really?” He interrupts, “Because I'm the one who knocked you up, and I'm the reason you won't get to go to college, and the reason you're fighting with Otan.” 

“None of that’s your fault!” she protests, “John...even if that were true, that’s not ruining my life.” 

He doesn’t respond immediately, which is good, it means he’s actually considering what she’s saying. 

“I could go to school later, it’s not like Raven’s going to fire me if I don’t have a degree. And Otan and I have fought before, we’ll make up too. And John,” she says, inhaling deeply through her nose, “it’s not like I could regret having a child with you.” 

That seems to catch him by surprise more than anything else has. There’s a soft shock on his face, like if she touched him he’d bend into any shape she pleased. 

“Please don’t think leaving will be better for me.”

“I—I didn't know you felt that way,” he says, looking a little ashamed of himself.

“I didn’t either,” she admits. ”And the timing could be better, but, I’m-I’m happy about it.”

John sets his glass, still full, down on the counter and crosses the kitchen to hug her. 

“I don't think I am, yet,” he admits, speaking with a wet voice against the side of her head. 

“It's okay,” she says, squeezing his middle, “Just don't be angry at yourself on my behalf, when this is something I want okay? And maybe ask me how I feel next time.” 

“Next time? Can we please handle this whole having a kid thing on a case-by-case basis?”

She laughs into his chest and considers for a moment letting go, but she thinks this hug is more for John than her, so she holds on. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. “I have some pamphlets you can look at.” 

“Yay, reading,” he says, reluctantly stepping back from her. She catches his hand before he can get too far. 

“We're okay now, right? You're okay?” 

He nods seriously. “I've got you, and you were right before, we’ll do our best.” 

Maybe to someone else it would feel like a platitude, but for the two of them, who have so rarely been their best selves, it feels important. That doesn't mean it eases all her worries, there are still a thousand and one things that could go wrong, but none of them feel too horrible now.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be for memori week and satisfy a bunch of the prompts i missed all in one go, but it ended up technically not satisfying any of them, being hella late, and centering around a trope that i typically don't really like and don't know if i managed to subvert at all, but i hope you enjoyed nonetheless, i guess.


End file.
